Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
April 30, 2008
1. Top Items -
Peripheral canal bill dies
Fresno
By E.J. Schultz , staff writer
An Assembly committee on Tuesday shelved legislation to build a canal around the suffering Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, telling the bill's author to try again next year.
Two years in the making, Senate Bill 27 tackled a subject so politically charged that author, Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, carefully avoided using the "P" word -- peripheral canal -- as he presented the bill as a way to shore up state water supplies without harming the environment.
But with environmentalists, farmers and Delta-area interests all opposed for different reasons, the legislation went the way of so many other water bills -- to the shelf to wait for more studies.
"We don't know what will fix this yet ... so to leap to the conclusion that it is a conveyance facility and to focus attention on that I think truly is premature," said Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, head of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee.
"Conveyance" is the other word for canal. SB 27 would have created a new seven-member authority to contract for the design and construction of a new facility to move water from the Delta to pumps that send the water to cities and farms. A $4 billion bond measure would have been put on the November ballot to help pay for the project, which would also be funded by users.
Urging Simitian to wait for more findings, the committee did not vote on his bill. He plans to scale it back to include only short-term fixes, like beefing up state plans to respond to a Delta earthquake. He vowed to tackle the canal again in a new bill next year, after the release of a much-anticipated report from the Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger-appointed Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force.#
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/899623.html
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